Appearance:
Name:Yan Shikai Hsi-shan.
Age: 56 years old.
Ethnicity: Han, Chinese.
Military Rank:General.
Government Position:Head of State.
Goverment Policy:Yan believes that, unless he is able to modernize and boost Ningxia's economy and infrastructure, he would be unable to prevent Ningxia from being overrun by rival warlords. He therefor follows an active policy of industrialisation whilst at the same time introducing militarism to develop a strong and nationalistic society, capable of defending its own interests.
In order to maintain public order and control, Yan's government promotes equal rights for both men and women and provides a free, state funded schooling system that is succeeding in producing a population of trained workers and farmers literate enough to be indoctrinated without difficulty.
Yan has also introduced a policy to eradicate the use of opium by rehabilitating addicts, pressuring individuals through their families, constructing sanitariums designed to slowly cure addicts of their addictions and by outlawing the production and growth of opium by instead promoting the growth of Goji berries and their usage in wine.
By actively promoting Christianity throughout his province and supporting the foreign missionaries, Yan has managed to gain some support from the west. Unfortunately the nature of his province, with no access to the sea, limits the aid, if any, he is capable of receiving.
Personality:In order to maintain Ningxia's neutrality and free it from serious military confrontations with rival warlords, Yan developed a strategy of shifting alliances between various warring cliques, inevitably joining only winning sides. Although he was weaker than many of the warlords that surrounded him, he often held the balance of power between neighboring rivals, and even those that he betrayed hesitated to retaliate against him, in case they might need his support in the future.
Yan implements numerous reforms in an effort to centralize his control over the province. Although embracing the traditional values of the landed gentry, he denounces their oppression of the peasantry, and takes steps to initiate land reforms and to weaken the power of landowners over the populace in the countryside. These reforms have so far succeeded in weakning the position of potential rivals in his province in addition to benefiting the Ningxia farmers.
Despite acting for the good of the people under his rule, most of his policies are also set-up in such a way that it increases his old over the province and his popularity. Effectively reforming the people and the land into what he believes is right for both him and the people.
Biography:Yan grew up in the city of Yinchuan, Ningxia. His father was an officer in the army of the Qing Dynasty and commanded a small infantry platoon to keep order in this city and the area surrounding the city. His father's position did not give him a lot of power but it did earn him a small amount of wealth and allowed his family to live above the normal standard of living.
Unfortunately that state of living did not continue for very long. His father was executed at the start of the first Dungan Revolt in 1862 and reduced his family's standard of living to below the normal standard of living, in poverty. After several years of living in poverty, Yan decided to join the local Muslim militia at the young age of fourteen, in order to help out his family.
Fortunately, his young age spared him from being used as cannon fodder and he was given the task of spying on the troops of the Qing Dynasty, which he did, for nearly a year before he got captured. His age spared him again, this time from execution. Instead he ended up volunteering for service in the regiment that had captured him, starting his career as a double spy.
Over the course of the conflict he continued to act as a double spy, only openly joining the military ranks of the Qing Dynasty when his cover was blown. The final two years of the rebellion he spend as a soldier on the frontline, fighting throughout the province he once called home. This experience thought him the terrain and his time in the military inspired his amibitions later in life.
His presence in the war also brought out his hatred for Muslims, if you fight someone long enough you will grow to hate them regardless, he had a reason though. The assassination of his father only fueled his dislike of the Hui people. As a result the unit he fought in took part in several war crimes, most of them being the execution of captured prisoners or the large scale of rape that took place. He would grow to deny and dismiss this part of his life but he did his fair share.
With the conflict over and the majority of the Hui people deported to other areas of China or Imperial Russia, he returned to his city to find out that the remnants of his family had been executed because of his service in the Qing Dynasty's military.
Having been particularly disgusted by the events he witnissed he became a strong supporter of every other religion that wasn't based on the muslim extremist ways and their sharia laws. Yan eventually found comfort in Christianity and grew to support it as the sole religion people should follow, a practise that has continued throughout his later life.
He kept his presence in the military, rising through the ranks while also becoming disgusted with what the regime had turned into, the numerous defeats at the hands of foreign power showed that the Qing Dynasty was a dying creature that was slowing down the herd. He pretended to be loyal though, serving loyally in the second Dungan revolt and the Boxer rebellion. By the time of the Warlord era things had become to unstable and Yan decided to take control over his own province, a relatively small area that he was able to control uncontested.
His years as a spy provided him with some experience in Diplomacy and flat out lying without it being noticeable. To best serve his own interest he married a young Mongolian girl, decreasing tensions with the Inner-Mongolian region to his north and eventually obtaining a safe passage from supplies coming from Russia through Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, the formentioned route was long though so supplies and trade were limited and hard to come by.
Other:- Yan has converted to Christianity and has developed a firm anti-Muslim stance based on events in his teenage years.
- Yan enjoys high prestige as a military commander but in reality is only an average tactician. His policy of supporting the winning side in conflicts has enabled him to often succeed in driving out the larger armies of his rivals. Which unknowst to others were more often then not, suffering from lack of reinforcements, armament, low morale and disorganisation as a result of having engaged in numerous campaigns against others beforehand.
